How to modify Firefox's configuration (about:config) Firefox's configuration is a long list of keys and values. To view this list, type about:config into the Firefox address bar. Enter the name of the key you want to update in the "Filter" field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as you type. To modify the value of a key, double-click on the value field and update the entry. To see your changes, restart your browser. Session restore Composed a long post or email message, then accidentally closed the tab or browser and lost all my work. With Firefox 2, set the browser.startup.page key to 3 to restore your browsing session - with form entries intact! Every time you start your browser or undo close tab after a wayward click. By Default, Firefox 2 automatically restores your session if your browser crashes - but this does it every time you restart your browser normally. Key: browser.startup.page Modified Value: 3 Default: 1 (open your specified homepages) Tools menu choose Options, and in the Main area, select "Show my windows and tabs from last time" from the "When Firefox starts" dropdown. Tab width before scrolling kicks in Firefox 2 minimizes tabs to a certain width, then sets the excess to scroll off the tab bar with left and right arrows. Reduce the minimum tab width so that more tabs fit in the bar before the scroll. Default is 100 pixels; I found that 75 worked better for me To disable tab scrolling entirely, set the value to 0. Key: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth Modified Value: 75 (fit in more tabs before overflow enables scroll) Alternate Modified Value: 0 (disable scroll entirely) Default: 100 Tab close buttons Fx 2.0 only: Another tab interface change in Firefox 2 is the addition of a close button on each individual tab. I happen to love this, but some hate it, saying it causes them to accidentally close a tab when just trying to switch to it. If you're a hater, revert to the Firefox 1.5 behavior by changing the browser.tabs.closeButtons value to 3. This will not display close tabs on individual tabs, and turn on a single close tab button at the right end of the tab bar. Key: browser.tabs.closeButtons Modified Value: 3 (revert to Firefox 1.5 behavior)Alternate Modified Value: 2 (don't display any close tab buttons) Default: 1 (display close buttons on all tabs) Fetch only what you click Fx .6 and up: Firefox has this wacky little feature that downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on pages you view, like the top result on a page of Google results. This means you use up bandwidth and CPU cycles and store history for web pages you may not have ever viewed. Creepy, eh? To stop that madness, set the network.prefetch-next key to false. Key: network.prefetch-next Modified Value: false Limit RAM usage All versions: Goodness knows I've done a good amount of belly-aching about Firefox's voracious appetite for RAM. (It's consistently the most memory-intensive process on both my PC and Mac.) Happily a simple config tweak got Mem Use right back down to a more comfortable number. Along with the previous prefetch mod, set your browser.cache.disk.capacity browser.cache.memory.capacity to a value that fits your total RAM. Key: browser.cache.memory.capacity Modified Value: Depends on your system's total memory. According to Computerworld: For RAM sizes between 512BM and 1GB, start with 15000. For RAM sizes between 128MB and 512M, try 5000. Turn off chrome tooltips All versions: I have an irritating Firefox problem on my Mac. When I try to drag a bookmark into one of my bookmark toolbar folders, the tool tip gets in the way and prevents the drop from working. Argh! Like you, I already know what all the buttons on my browser chrome do, so the tool tips aren't necessary. To turn them off, set the browser.chrome.toolbar_tips key value to false. Bonus is, it solved my Mac's bookmark drag and drop problem. Key: browser.chrome.toolbar_tips Modified Value: false Lastly, though 2.0's Default value is a lot more reasonable than 1.5's, you can use about:config to put off that annoying Unresponsive Script dialog on Javascript-heavy web pages. Update: From the comments, a few more good about:config tweaks: layout.spellcheck Default = 2 turns on Firefox 2's spell-checking in input fields as well as textareas. (That means no more typos in Lifehacker post headlines!) browser.urlbar.hideGoButton=true turns off the rarely-used Go button at the end of the address bar, for more room to see long URLs. Thanks, sister-ray!
I've found messing around with the network.http entries help a lot as well. Also, I just found a printer on my list under print.printer_\ that I haven't used for 2 years. I've reformatted and reinstalled stuff recently, but I guess when I grabbed all my old Firefox junk some other old crap came with it. It wasn't causing a problem, but that's something to watch out for.
forevergeek.com has a useful guide on speeding up firefox for broadband users. basically after getting to the hidden config settings you set the browser to request more data that it usually does. 1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. 2. Alter the entries as follows: Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. 3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now! + Starting in Firefox 2.0, The option to block third-party cookies has been removed from the user interface [1]. Firefox 2.0 users who wish to limit allowed cookies to those set by the originating website can use about:config to modify the preference network.cookie.cookieBehavior to "1"
"Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once." I really wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. Firefox caps out at 8 pipelined requests, which is the max allowed by the HTTP spec. By Default, it does 4 pipelined requests. Furthermore, if you could do 30 pipelined requests we'd have sites with a high population of FF users being brought to their knees pretty quickly. Some sites will even block your IP if you try to pull a stunt like that.
Is there a value that would display the new tab close buttons in both places (on the tab AND in the top right)? I like the new buttons, but I also like the top right button for closing more than one tab quickly etc.
I recently installed the "tiny menu" extension that was on lifehacker a couple of days ago. All is working well - I want to know if there is a way to move the icons from the statusbar (the bottom) to the toolbar (top) ?? There are a couple extensions I regularly use the icon for (greasemonkey, noscript) If I could move them, then I could turn the statusbar off completely, giving me more "real-estate" for browsing.
I like how you've used the Tinymenu to nix the navigation toolbar!
Clever! This one's a personal preference, and i can totally see why ppl
do like to use it, but it saves space: browser.urlbar.hideGoButton true I think the key to this is having the paste & go extension running as well. It's a great feature in Opera and i don't know why Firefox hasnt got it as
Default. Another spacesaver essential i couldnt do without is stop or reload (looks like you could use this one Gina! :P ) And conversely because the new search box is so tight now searchbar autosizer is an absolute must.
invid - Tab Mix Plus extension will do exactly that. i thought FF 2.0
would make TMP obsolete, but it still has some extra options that
didn't make it into FF 2.0.
I was really hoping browser.tabs.closeButtons would have made it to an Options -> Tabs option in this release. I found I move the mouse a lot more if I don't use mode 3. I'd love to get rid of the tab pulldown (that little [\/] in the upper right corner.) I thought I saw an about:config for it a few days ago, but no luck finding it today. Anyone?
One thing I found out by accident that some Fox newbies might like is that by changing the name of Firefox, you can have multiple versions loaded. Otherwise, if you downloaded a new version, it replaced the previous one. I have versions 1.5.0.6, 1.5.0.7 and 2.0 all loaded now.
Shouldn't "browser.cache.disk.capacity" really be "browser.cache.memory.capacity"? That's what the original article suggests. It doesn't make sense to limit your disk cache in order to get better memory usage :)
Zadaz: There's a little userchrome.css hack to get rid of the tab pulldown - it's part of the pre-final 2.0 solution for getting rid of tab scrolling - I've had it installed and it still works well on 2.0 final. You have to stick this in your Firefox user profile in the Application Data tree: / Disable "List all Tabs" Button / .tabs-alltabs-button { display: none !important; } / Disable Container box for "List all Tabs" Button / .tabs-alltabs-box { display: none !important; }
layout.spellcheck
Default=2 will enable spellcheck for text inputs, not just textareas.
Third Tab Mix Plus. I tried turning it off earlier today to see what the "raw" 2.0 tabs were like. But Tab Mix is WAY better - more control over close buttons, restore closed tabs, visual cues for read and unread tabs, multi-lining instead of pull-down if you have too many tabs for a single line.
Firefox has this wacky little feature that downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on pages you view, like the top result on a page of Google results. This means you use up bandwidth and CPU cycles and store history for web pages you may not have ever viewed. Creepy, eh?
To stop that madness, Couple points: 1. It doesn't just download what it "thinks" you want, it downloads what page authors say is where you're probably going to go next and then only when it won't slow down anything else. The goal is to save time. 2. Computing resources exist to be consumed. Are you paying per megabyte of network access? Are you getting disk swapping on a regular basis? Is your CPU usage 100%? No? Good thing you're saving it all up for later when you'll really need it.
@grayrest: I get the goal of the feature, but I don't want site authors putting web pages into my history that I haven't viewed myself. I find it bizarre that prefetching is turned ON by Default. Seems like something one should opt into.
Hint for those who are in England or Canada or anyone who spells "colour" with a U: to download another dictionary go to https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/dictionaries/?lang=en-US It took me a long time to figure this out.
Firefox only prefetches when the browser idle, so dialup users shouldn't be impacted. CPU isn't detected, but CPU overhead should be fairly minimal on a reasonably sized page as it's only fetching, not drawing or doing js. Big pages like the one-page manuals that float around have been perf problems in the past, but I don't follow the community closely enough these days to know if that's still a problem. As to the automatic speed detection, I do remember there being discussion about tweaking networking prefs based on connection speed, but I think that wound up being left to the extensions.
"Shouldn't "browser.cache.disk.capacity" really be "browser.cache.memory.capacity"?" Probably, but even so, it doesn't appear that this tweak effectively addresses the memory issue. The Default setting is 50MB, and my utilization was 120MB. I limited it to 15000 as stated in the article, and it jumped up 15MB instead!
probably something I should have already known. After disabling IPv6 under FC4, I went into Firefox and set the following preferences in about:config: network.http.max-connections=8 network.http.max-connections-per-server=4 network.http.pipelining=false network.dns.disableIPv6=true
As a result, the site now works under FC4, using both Fx 1.5.0.7 and 2.0. There are still occasional glitches, so these settings probably aren't optimal, but things are way better than they were before.
@ Gus H.: All the about:config settings are stored in the prefs.js file in your Profiles folder. If you are a Windows user, you should find it here: \Documents and Settings\Your_username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ Default.x17. Just delete the useless entries out of it and then save it. I do this after shutting down my FF. I don't know if you can do it while FF is running. My experience cleaning the bookmarks.html while FF is running has taught me not to do it while it is running.
Going back up to one of the offered hacks, I'm a tab close button hater for the reasons mentioned, but I also don't see the need for that annoying little red X in the first place. I discovered, quite by accident, that middle-clicking on the tab (clicking the scroll wheel) closes the tab quite nicely and is pretty hard to do by accident.
mookieproof try Menu Editor which not only lets you limit the number of context menus, but any other menu to just those you need.
Great tips. Thanks... Does somebody know how to change the search engines' options? I don't want my Google Search Engine to go to http://www.google.com/firefox as the Default page, I want it to go directly to http://www.google.com/ With Yahoo, I don't want http://search.yahoo.com/ , I want http://www.yahoo.com as the Default when there isn't any string in the text field... Thanks in advance...
For you fellow Mac users who want your click-hold context menus back, go to about:config and change the following integer: ui.click_hold_context_menus [change to true] Works like a charm!
@ fushark: Thank you fushark! It worked just like "advertised." fushark says: @ Gus H.: All the about:config settings are stored in the prefs.js file in your Profiles folder. If you are a Windows user, you should find it here: \Documents and Settings\Your_username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ Default.x17. Just delete the useless entries out of it and then save it.
@ pinky if you navigate to your fx user profile/searchplugins you can open the search plugin [it's an .xml file] and edit the content iirc you edit the last line to the appropriate url
@pinky and theaulddubliner It is in searchplugins folder, but it is not necessarily in the ff user profile. In my case, it is located in the Mozilla Firefox program folder itself.
@ fushark yes you are quite correct that is the Default location - mea culpa btw if you have more than one user account on windows, creating a searchplugins folder in your profile allows you have personal search plugins as well as having common plugins with each user [he says knowing it worked with 1.5 but haven't checked in 2.0] you can also move the folder from the installation folder to your profile folder and it will still work the same
@Gina: Setting browser.chrome.toolbar_tips to false will shut off all mouse over tips in Firefox 2.0 and it's extensions. I don't know how it works on a Mac but if you have say Gmail Manager installed, you will not be able to see what's new in your inbox when you mouse over the icon in the status bar.
They removed one of my favorite features from the configuration options. The ability to load only images from the original website. Apparently even some Firefox users couldn't figure it out as it was one of they main sources of bug reports. Fortunately you can still configure it in about:config. permissions. Default.images 3 will load only the images hosted on the same site as the page you loaded. You can also add exceptions just like before With FF 2.0, I've lost the ability to get into my Google taskbar search space using alt-S. Now it pulls down the History menu. How do I redefine either the Google taskbar or FF to give me a keyboard shortcut into search?
The browser.cache.disk.capacity definitely INCREASED firefox's memory consumption on my machine. Went from 32MB to more than 50.
browser.cache.disk.capacity adjusts the size of your cache. It has nothing to do with the amount of RAM FF uses. If you go to Tools>options>advanced>network tab you can adjust the same setting.
My personal favorite about:config tweak is setting browser.search.openintab to true. No more accidentally overwriting the page I'm on when I'm performing a search to follow up on later. In Firefox 1.5, iirc this used to be handled by one of the tab management extensions I used. But now Firefox 2 offers most of those tab management options natively. Opening search queries in a new tab is one of the few settings I didn't find.
@ oogbart: The items mentioned in your forevergeek posting (as well as many other speed-up tweaks) can be preformed with the Fasterfox extension. Its a great thing, especially if you have some bandwidth to spare ...find it at fasterfox.mozdev.org/ -pd88
@MAW: try setting either or both of these to false: browser.chrome.favicons browser.chrome.site_icons It might be site_icons that would take care of it. I disable both just because I don't need to see the site icons on my browser and my bookmark. They just make my bookmarks.html file bloated.
Thanks for that awesome page of good tweaks. I used almost all of them. I, too, was annoyed at first by the close button on every tab as I had gotten used to the close button on the right side of the tab bar. I switch back to that and I just couldn't get used to it again. I did discover a 4th setting for the browser.tabs.closeButtons setting just by playing with it. If you enter 0, it only puts the close button on the active tab and hides it on all other tabs, meaning you can have it on the tab itself but not accidentally close an inactive tab when switching to it. I was hoping for a setting that gave both the close button on the tab itself as well as the close button on the tab bar, but there was no such setting.
In case anybody hasn't noticed; I know I didn't until just now, right click on a textarea and choose the Languages... menu to install and activate dictionaries. browser.search.openintab to true is a great one too.
I'm usually making a lot of connections to the same server, and so I get hit with waiting for sessions to close before another will start. Here's what I change: network.http.max-connections 32 network.http.max-connections-per-server 12 network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy 32 network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 10 (or higher) network.http.request.max-start-delay 0 The last one there is the most important. It says that even if the maximum number of persistent connections per server has been reached, go ahead and break that limit immediately if more connections are waiting. (Some of us are really Type A personalities.) Also note that my numbers are based on big, fat broadband connections where I'm essentially the only user so I can suck up all the bandwidth I want. network.http.pipelining true I don't change the max pipeline requests, but only turn pipelining on. I figure 4 requests in the pipeline is plenty. All these will also work with Camino on Mac as well. I haven't tried them with Flock, but they probably work there too.
@Eugene: No config option for this one AFAIK, but there is a small extension you can use: myurlbar_a
I have a question that hopefully one of you smart people can answer: How do I get my homepage to appear in a newly-opened window? I keep getting a blank page. I'm thinking that the session restore has
I found some more tweaks here http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_1.html
While this is not a tweak, it is a very useful tip that I discovered quite by accident and clumsiness. Apologies in advance if this has been previously posted - my search did not find it. If you use a mouse with a scroll wheel and click on the wheel while the mouse pointer is over a link, it will automatically open the link in a new tab. It seems that setting browser.chrome.toolbar_tips to false not only turns off tooltips in the chrome, but also on title'd anchor tags as well.
>> Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number >> like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. > I really wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. Firefox caps out > at 8 pipelined requests, which is the max allowed by the HTTP spec. Thanks for pointing this out, but I think it would also be useful to explain what is actually going on here. Pipelining specifies how many requests are sent over one connection at once, i.e. before the respective replies start coming in. If this is set to 8, this does not mean you can't have 20 freshly opened tabs with data coming in in all of them. That is, this setting is not the number of requests Firefox will make at once, it's something less important. Tweaking this setting can still be helpful for a power user, but it doesn't help as much as some people thik. Maybe they're experiencing a placebo effect along with the real one.
I've been bothered for awhile by a couple of things in Firefox. Apparently, other people have noticed them too. When text containing certain "special characters" is copied from Firefox/Camino, you cannot then paste the text (e.g., into a text editor or word processor). The discussion thread related to this issue is at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=477293&highl... My solution thus far (for about a year) has been to switch to another browser (Safari, iCab, Opera, IE don't have this problem) and copy the text from there but it would be nice to be able to do it without having to leave Firefox and use another browser just to copy text from a single problem Web page. The other problem that bugs me is that Firefox/Camino copy the "alt text" from graphics when they are embedded in Web-page text. Sometimes this is useful if the alt text is different than the caption, but usually the alt text is the same as the picture caption and you end up with an exact duplicate of the caption text. Even more annoying, Firefox/Camino copies the alt text from embedded advertisements! It would be nice to be able to turn this "feature" on and off--or just off, since other browsers don't do this. The discussion thread related to this issue is at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=477293&highl...
On a related note, does anyone here know how to get a vertical tab strip in Firefox 2? It used to be easily possible in 1.5 and before, esp. with the Vertigo extension, which doesn't work in 2.0. :(
Hi all, the browser.disk.cache setting is a dud. That sets the disk
cache, not memory cache. The disk cache can already be
Modified easily
using Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network in Firefox.
With FF 1.5, when I Ctrl-T or dbl-clicked the tab bar to bring up a new
tab, focus was automatically placed on the URL address bar ready for me
to type... This isn't the case with FF 2.0 :( How do I get this functionality back?
In response to the toolbar tips, this seemed like a good change to make. However, if you use the download-statusbar extension (like I'm sure many of you do), this config also disables the tooltip that displays all information about the file you are downloading. Normally, you can move your mouse over the download progress and view speed, time remaining, etc. However, with the toolbar tips turned off, that information is no longer displayed. So, what I thought would be a good change turns out to be annoying. To make Firefox to display search results in a new tab automatically: 1. Enter about:config in the location bar 2. Set browser.search.openintab to true (you have to manually add it if it's not present)